Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger formed one of the greatest creative partnerships in the history of British cinema - The Archers. Their films were often controversial - Churchill tried to suppress the release of "The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp". Later, "The Red Shoes" and "The Tales of Hoffman" startled and enchanted cinema audiences with their use of colour, form amd music. However, in the last ten years the magic, poetry and passion of their work has been acknowledged around the world and they are firmly in the pantheon of film masters. This book is a comprehensive analysis of their films and is a useful guide to their work.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
I am a film historian, curator, broadcaster and consultant, as well as Anniversary Professor of Film and Media History at Birkbeck College, University of London, since 1999. I've written and edited books on early film, Powell and Pressburger, Russian cinema, Scorsese and Gilliam (full details elsewhere on this site); and worked on exhibitions ranging from Film as Film (Hayward, 1979), Eisenstein: His Life and Art (MoMA Oxford, 1988) and Twilight of the Tsars (Hayward, 1991) to Spellbound: Art and Film (Hayward, 1996) and Modernism: Designing a New World (V&A, 2006).
Coming soon: I have chapters in a number of books, including Fantastic Voyages of the Cinematic Imagination: Georges Méliès's Trip to the Moon, edited by Matthew Solomon (SUNY Press); and Conjuring the Real: The Role of Architecture in Eighteenth and Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Edited by Rumiko Handa and James Potter (Nebraska.
I write regularly for the film journal Sight and Sound. I also contribute frequently to radio and television programmes on cinema - most recently an essay on Harold Pinter as screenwriter and on J S Bach as a film composer, both for BBC Radio 3; a contribution on Lenny Henry's favourite film (guess which?) on BBC Radio 2; and on TV, interviews for The Thirties in Colour (BBC4), Scotland on Screen, Dive. Dive, Dive!, and, forthcoming, The History of British Pathe and Rex Appeal.
More info on my website: www.ianchristie.org
